Do You Ever Feel Dumb?

No, this entry doesn't have anything to do with yesterday's subject. When it comes to stupidity, I work fast, but not that fast.

No, today I just had one of those days where I felt kind of dumb all day, and left work feeling like it had been a kind of crummy day, even though nothing really went particularly wrong.

Part of it is that work has been dull lately. My group in the department pretty much wrapped up the bulk of our work a couple of weeks ago. Now, certainly I don't want to crow about it; there are plenty of people who are still working hard on this release. Testing in particular is extremely busy, as is always the case for any product nearing release. As a result, developers who are presently underloaded have been assigned to help verify bugs. (I almost wrote "asked" to verify bugs. It really bugs me when someone says they've "asked" people to do something when they've really "assigned" them to do so. It just sets off my "I'm being manipulated!" sensors. Anyway.)

Having put in a year-and-a-half as a tester, I know that verifying bugs - making sure that fixes made to bugs were really fixed as advertised, and that no new bugs were introduced - is the most thankless part of being a tester. Especially if you're verifying bugs that other people logged. Especially if you're not quite familiar with the part of the system you're testing. Especially if you don't quite have the right tools for the job.

So not only do I not have my usual work to do, but the work I do have to do, isn't much fun. And nonetheless I want to do a good job, so my lack of motivation makes me feel, well, conflicted at least. Maybe a little guilty. Not happy, in any event.

Other things that left me feeling a bit inferior today:

We had a meeting near the end of the day in which I stated what I thought about a particular subject, and then was rather roundly disagreed with later on. It wasn't a big deal, just a typical business issue (yes, I'm being evasive about the topic; the specifics aren't appropriate for this venue), and I still felt like my opinions were valid based on the experiences I'd had, but it did leave me feeling like I'd really missed some important things, and not entirely clear on how I could do better next time.

Also, I set up an outing to go see the Oakland A's play the Boston Red Sox on Sunday. CJ and David are coming, as well as Debbi. Pedro Martinez, the Red Sox' ace and the best pitcher in baseball is supposed to pitch that day. The A's have been horrible all year, so despite this being something of a last-minute thing (I sent out organizing mail on Saturday afternoon), I figured we could still get good seats.

Well, apparently everyone else want to see the best pitcher in baseball, since our seat choices were lower-deck outfield seats, or second-deck obstructed view seats at the edge of the outfield. Gah! After some thought, I went with the lower-deck seats, although I'm not sure it would make a big difference. (And unlike Pacific Bell Park, where the Giants play, the Oakland Coliseum does have some crummy seats.) Also, I've been trying to figure out how to buy A's tickets without paying the obscene BASS ticket fees (which works out to about $4.00 per ticket), but I haven't yet figured out if there's a way to do this.

So, although I got the tickets, I still felt a bit like I let everyone down. Five days before the game!

So that was pretty much my day. Plus a few meetings (oh, joy). It didn't seem to bad at the time, but by the time I got home I felt like the day just had not been a high-water mark in recent weeks.

On the plus side to the day, I did exchange several e-mails with Debbi! In the light of a new day she still says she had a good time last night. And that pretty much made my day all by itself.

Oh, and one other good thing happened. Which I hope I'll be able to talk about here real soon.